That Music List

Saturday, 10 October 2026

LIST 275 - 10/10/2026 (a sixth cover versions special)

Hello again,

"Sunday in Sheffield, people. DID YOU GO TO CHURCH? Don't worry, this is Tchurch!"

And the gospel according to Tchotchke at Sidney & Matilda last Sunday night was very, very good indeed.

The Playin' Dumb single from last year's album of the same name was my belated way into this New York three-piece, so inevitably a pristine rendition of that was always going to number among my highlights of the evening.

However, I also loved how much they also draw from a wider palette than just the '60s bubblegum girl groups that are the usual starting points of reference. I've seen Todd Rundgren's poppier output mentioned before now, and I got that entirely.

Tonight offered hints of other early '70s US power pop such as The Raspberries, too, plus a cover of the Bo Diddley-penned Mickey & Sylvia standard Love Is Strange which sounded for all the world like Mink DeVille until the vocals kicked in.

The last-named wasn't the only cover on the night, given other tasteful and appropriate selections from Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons and The Shangri-Las, the latter a rip-roaring run through Bulldog by way of an encore.

A tremendous set overall, even with singer/drummer Anastasia Sanchez demonstrably full of the lurge to have hit the trio on their travels, yet still nailing song after song. It's frightening to imagine how awesome they'd be at 100% full power.

I wonder whether they had any takers for the guitar on the merch stall for which they were asking £1,200. That's a bit of a change from the usual seven inch single and pin badge fare.

It was nice also to come across the work of support act Doe (not the 2010s trio of the same name) for the first time.

A front line of singer-guitarists who could pass for a young Emma Anderson and Miki Berenyi from Lush, but a sound which couldn't quite - some 90s shoegaze inflections, yes, but the psychedelic blues description I'd seen online was more accurate.

Early days, I'm assuming, and if so a promising start, all the more so on the night with a stand-in bassist deployed.

***

Talk of Tchotchke isn't entirely irrelevant to this week's List theme, given their aforementioned propensity for a well-chosen cover version. Here are another thirty-three covers - some of them personal favourites of the recording artists doing the covering, some less so, some better executed than others, but all interesting to me one way or another.

From Phil Ochs to Cerrone, from The Raspberries to Lightnin' Hopkins, from Young Marble Giants to Lady Gaga, there's a bit of everything in here.

(I can be persuaded either way, incidentally, as to whether DJ Kaos counts as a cover version, a remix, or just pilfering. Let's go with the first-named today).

You'll find a few examples of cover subject and cover object adjacent to each other, all quite deliberately so. Specifically: Stevie Wonder covering The Beatles next to a Stevie Wonder cover by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (the latter not all that regular visitors to this parish otherwise); a Magnetic Fields cover by analogue synthpop supergroup Doublespeak next to Stephin Merritt (in his Future Bible Heroes incarnation) having a crack at Vicky Leandros's 1967 Eurovision entry (and wasn't her rendition of that one of the less painful guest spots at the 2026 Contest, by the way?); and Carter USM's run through Rent by the Pet Shop Boys next to Blade's hip-hop reinterpretation of Lenny and Terrence by Carter USM.

It's worth spending a moment or two considering the original of Lenny and Terrence, released in October 1993 as the second single from the previous month's Post Historic Monsters and possible to regard as the precise moment that some of the music weeklies and monthlies started to go after Carter (get Carter, even).

At least one singles reviewer lazered in on the fact that, given a bountiful array of contemporaenous stars whose music Jim Bob and Fruitbat could have slagged off in song, they namechecked two black performers and nobody else.

No objective reading of the lyrics sheet can conclude that this was a racist act, but it was an extraordinarily clumsy one, inviting bad faith agents to think or presume the worst of them. Were social media around in 1993, its more pernicious elements would have enjoyed a feeding frenzy.

A rant at two artists who between them racked up two top five albums (one a number one) and seven top 30 singles that calendar year wasn't the flex the south London duo might have thought it was anyway. Moreover, for all of Lenny Kravitz's affectations of Hendrix and whoever else on Are You Gonna Go My Way, Symphony or Damn by the artist still known at the time as Terence Trent D'Arby was conversely a strong, varied and more authentic-feeling collection blessed with at least one genuinely excellent single.

Maybe not surprisingly, therefore, Blade's more extended tirade lands its blows more successfully in the verse on Lenny than on Terence. See what you think.

If the inkies went after Carter USM in the mid-1990s, they weren't any less sparing of Fischerspooner in and around the time of their #1 debut album at the start of this century, the music press's ire drawn by anything from the band's apparent style over substance to the eye-watering sum paid by Ministry of Sound for their signature.

I suspect there was also something unspoken and a bit nastier at play, Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner's flamboyant music and personae largely at odds with the determinedly earnest (and mostly heterosexual male) guitar band image and music which certain papers strove to promote instead to the near-exclusion of much else. (See also the odium directed towards the similarly stylish Romo scene and acts five years prior, at the height of Britpop, by all bar perhaps a couple of Melody Maker scribes).

Fischerspooner only actually split up seven years ago after what might be considered a broadly unfulfilled career (certainly from the perspective of racking up any smash hits), but for my money I'd still take the deceptively measured, serene cover of Wire's The 15th from that debut album over a hundred of the Starsailors they were shunned for any day of the week.

A cover of a 2001 song rather than a 2001 cover of something older, Alien Chicks' glorious tear through Missy Elliott's Get Ur Freak On from the new EP released only eight days ago makes them - I think - the first act to appear in consecutive Lists since we came back at the start of the year. Right place, right time.

The year 2000, meanwhile, bore witness to the arrival in the charts of Sugababes, at once the coolest, smartest British girlpop band of them all; and including Pink Opaque's recent - and appropriately reverential yet characteristically sparkly - cover of Overload is the very least I can do after failing to get to Pete and Danielle's first ever headline performance (back at Sidney and Matilda) this Wednesday just gone. Trust you knocked it out of the park, both.

Finally, there's an indiepop cover of Bizarre Love Triangle... because you're never far away from an indiepop cover of Bizarre Love Triangle. The New Order staple is one of those songs, along with Emma's House by The Field Mice, which seems to get covered disproportionately often by indiepop acts, almost by way of a rite of passage.

The Frente! interpretation bundled on to volume #20 of Indie Top 20 gets the nod this time, but I could just have easily included Even As We Speak's. Or Echosmith's. Or Ishan's. Or Glaiza De Castro's. Or Whirl's (the last-named at least adding a bit of late-'80s lo-fi fuzz to proceedings).

Kids - it's a classis song and all that, but you don't need to knock any more of these out. We won't think any less of you. We promise.

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 05/10/2026).
Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

DOCH DER COUNTDOWN LÄUFT
DIE ÄRZTE - Gehn wie ein Ägypter (1987)

BIS - Twilight Cafe (2014)

MAXWELL FARRINGTON & LE SUPERHOMARD – The Train (2020)

NINE INCH NOIZE - Memorabilia (2026)

THE OBLIVIANS - Vietnam War Blues (1996)

CHRISTY MOORE - Changes (2005)

DANCE HALL AT PEEL ACRES

DJ KAOS - Oceans Apart (1996)

BULLETPROOF

RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - Higher Ground (1989)

STEVIE WONDER – We Can Work It Out (1970)

ADAM GREEN – Eating Noddemix (2003)

BMX BANDITS - Sunshine Day (1995)

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS - Overnight Sensation (Hit Record) (2026)

COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
FRENTE! - Bizarre Love Triangle (1994)

MY FORGOTTEN 80s IS MORE FORGOTTEN THAN YOUR FORGOTTEN 80s
BILLY BREMNER - Shatterproof (1984)

PINK OPAQUE - Overload (2026)

ALEX KAPRANOS & CLARA LUCIANI – Summer Wine (2020)

ERASURE - Supernature (Daniel Miller & Phil Legg Remix) (1989)

THE REAL TUESDAY WELD – Polka Face (2011)

KIRSTY MacCOLL - You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby (1989)

FISCHERSPOONER - The 15th (2000)

I LOVE POP MUSIC AND I WILL FIGHT YOU
McFLY - Baby’s Coming Back (2007)

RAPPING SONGS
BLADE - Lenny and Terrence (1994)

CARTER USM - Rent (1990)

DOUBLESPEAK - Smoke and Mirrors (2026)

FUTURE BIBLE HEROES - Love is Blue (1997)

THE FLAMING LIPS - God Only Knows (2012)

FRANK SIDEBOTTOM - Material Boy (1985)

EUROTASTIC
LEILA K – Ca Plane Pour Moi (1993)

TREMBLING BLUE STARS - Lady-O (2009)

ALIEN CHICKS - Get Ur Freak On (2026)

VIC REEVES - Black Night (1991)

TALLY HO! - Nature Boy (2012)

(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

LAIBACH - Opus Dei (Life is Life) (1987)

Saturday, 3 October 2026

LIST 274 - 03/10/2026

(International Strike Force - Cumberland Arms, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 08/07/2000. Picture is author's own)

Hello again,

Firstly, a little apology if reading this blog has started to feel a bit of a feat of endurance this past couple of weeks. It's only occurred to me whilst compiling this one that with List #274 I've now gone twelve in a row without throwing in any sort of special or one-off by way of relief. That's the longest such sequence in the seventeen-year history of this blog, by two.

Perhaps the additional features introduced since I came back in January have added sufficient variety to stop things getting too samey, but even so.

There are actually a couple of specials more or less compiled and ready to share with you, including the first collection of cover versions since List #217 in late 2016; and in addition I did promise at least one more Feature Fest before the year was out. Trick now is working out how soon to drop these in once done.

If you can't wait that long for something a bit different (and why should you), perhaps I can recommend List #201, which is one of the latest to which I've returned in order to sort out the wonky text formatting and repair any broken links.

It's entitled The Many Guises of Bobby Wratten, and features a representative sample of works by, collaborations with and covers of the one songwriter whose output has meant the most to me my entire adult life. And perhaps has to some of you, too.

***

In terms of this week's fare, Then and Now returns to enable me to say three words I wasn't anticipating committing to print any time soon - new Seefeel album.

Away even longer - fifteen years - than Warp stablemates Boards of Canada, the release of the Sol.Hz long-player was not premiered with any of that act's enigmatic tasters, videotapes and the like.

It's no less deserving of fanfare for all that, however. Whilst not a victory lap as such, Sol.Hz certainly acknowledges and references much of Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock's previous recorded work, albeit with some of the more abrasive percussive tendencies smoothed off or dispensed with altogether as a predominately ambient feel is aimed for. Not much in here thuds like, say, Tied.

I've also noted and appreciated the occasional nod, on tracks such as AM Flares, to the watery guitar washes of Cocteau Twins, with whom the original four-piece Seefeel toured the UK and mainland Europe in the early-mid 1990s. (My younger brother and his schoolmate, devoted Cocteaus fans both at the time, had one of their nearest things to a rock 'n' roll moment when their loitering outside the stage door of the Manchester Academy in early 1994 earned them a pre-gig football kickabout with assorted members of both bands. I digress).

Other new or recent-ish stuff this week comes from Sylvan Esso, Alien Chicks, Heron & Crane, Orchids and One Dove side project Montjuïc, Perennial and reactivated Californian indiepop veterans The Autocollants.

The last-named, nearly but not quite doing a Panixphere in taking over thirty years to release a debut album (out on Shelflife Records and licensed in the UK to Nick Godfrey's Precious Recordings of London imprint), could actually have been properly inserted into a Tangle of Jangle triple bill. Come to think of it, with Caramel and also Bart and Friends included this week, I've practically included that feature by stealth anyway.

Further probing of the Shelflife website confirms the release of a split single earlier this year featuring The Autocollants and their heroes The Cat's Miaow, like the aforementioned Bart and Friends a band which can claim Australian indiepop's ubiquitous Bart Cummings among their number. My love of The Cat's Miaow and successor band Hydroplane is a matter of record on this blog and elsewhere, so I'll offer you only prohibitively short odds on one of the contributions from the former (apparently songs written last century but newly recorded) featuring on a List in the very near future.

28 years earlier than that Shelflife/Precious collaboration, there was the Troubleman Unlimited/Slampt Underground Organisation joint release Taking a Chance on Chances, a fine document of all that was right and good in turn of the century UK and US DIY punk/indiepop. Showcasing one act from each side of the pond seemed the way to go with this one, hence a selection from both Assembly Line People Program and International Strike Force.

In the latter's case this is horribly overdue. Having named-dropped them a few times during the lifetime of That Music List, usually in the context of important northeast England DIY acts of the 1990s, it occurred to me that I've never actually included a track by International Strike Force before now - only ever their previous incarnation Golden Starlet. Oops.

A fierce, feisty, funny, invigorating proposition live, more so than the fairly static photo from my archive above gives them any credit for, singer/guitarist Ms C and company are one of so many acts from around then who can count themselves unlucky not to have existed at a time when a place on any Indietracks festival line-up, and the adoration of many new fans there, could have been almost guaranteed.

Saturday, 26 September 2026

LIST 273 - 26/09/2026

(The Piney Gir Country Roadshow - Tapestry Goes West festival, Margam Park, Port Talbot 10/08/2007. Pictures are author's own)

Hello again,

Heaven knows how the photos at the top of this week's List will turn out, taken as they were 19 years ago on a temperamental first generation digital camera.

However, including a contemporaneous track by The Piney Gir Country Roadshow this week was all the excuse I needed to include these snaps of Piney herself, and permit myself a bit of time reminiscing about the Tapestry Goes West festival in August 2007 at which they were taken.

This would have been a year before my first trips to either Latitude or Indietracks, so my first outdoor festival experience of any sort (indoor ones had been attended for up to twelve years prior). Unfamiliar with that sort of festival-going as I was up until then, I nevertheless knew sufficient to know that Tapestry's mixture of music, jousting, nettle ale, archery, walks around ruins and ostriches probably wasn't a strictly typical one. From 2003 to 2005, when this brainchild of club impresario Barry Stilwell had taken place in Cornwall, it had similarly juxtaposed live acts against a no less incompatible spaghetti western theme.

(Margam Castle, Margam House and Margam ostriches - Tapestry Goes West festival, Margam Park, Port Talbot 10/08/2007. Pictures are author's own)

Perhaps that's one of the reasons why Indietracks also appealed so much subsequently - indiepop, steam trains, owls and can crushing aren't always found on the same bill, either. I like variety. And the Tapestry bill also offered that in abundance despite a relatively modest total of only around 30-odd acts across two stages on two days.

Here was my first sighting in the flesh of gnarly one-man band Seasick Steve, not yet a year since breaking out to a wider audience but still some time before the full exposition of his former life as Steve Leach, frontman of disco act Crystal Grass (as sampled by S-Express).

It would be a toss-up as to who drew the biggest crowd of the weekend, either Steve or mysterious, Bacofoil-clad proggers Chrome Hoof. The latter won the audience participation prize of the weekend, at least, leading all those present on a procession - accompanied, with singer Lola Olafisoye chanting - at the conclusion of their set before burning some sort of effigy in an oil drum. You don't get that everywhere.

My fellow travellers were particularly looking forward to seeing psychedelic Medieval revivalists Circulus, as - on the strength of such as My Body is Made of Sunlight, shared in the very first List - was I. We didn't quite get our wish, the band's autocratic founder Michael Tyack - think The League of Gentleman's Ollie Plimsolls with a greater predilection for a cape and pointy shoes - having recently fired almost all of the band and continuing here with just the crumhorn player still in tow.

Those fans intent on still throwing themselves about to Power to the Pixies et al, regardless of the lack of any percussive aid, duly did, but it wasn't quite what many of us had in mind. Buy the first three Circulus albums - and maybe Tom Cox's writings on Michael also - and remember them that way instead.

My own record shopping list increased incrementally following Tapestry weekend, notably to include the then new to me Threatmantics, a south Wales band at a south Wales festival. Once I'm finally sufficiently happy with my Welsh language special List to publish it on these pages, you can be certain their often keys/bass/viola-led fare will be making an appearance.

From memory Tapestry Goes West lasted for only one more renewal after our 2007 attendance, destined to become just another small chapter in the multifaceted story of boutique British music festivals from the late c20th onwards.

Nevertheless, I'm glad it afforded this greenhorn a nice enough experience so as not to have put me off open-air festivals forever. I would definitely not have coped with a Glastonbury (comfortably more than double the £60 weekend price of Tapestry in 2007) first time up, though I suspect I wouldn't even now.

***

Other than overlong dribblings about a defunct Welsh music festival, what can I offer you this week?

1) New or recent things from a bunch of acts all making their first appearances on a List, namely Melanie A Davis & The Madness, Planette Automatic, Denzel Curry & Kenneth Blume, Inner Magic ft Ruth Radelet, Salt Water Criminals and Massachusetts-based mod-poppers The Chelsea Curve.

In the case of the last-named, this is very sadly a posthumous appearance, The Chelsea Curve's singer-bassist Linda Bean-Pardee (also briefly a member of Gang Of Four and a graphic designer of some repute) having been lost to cancer in mid-August.

A fierce, joyful spirit, by all accounts, and the Boston music scene is doubtless poorer for her passing.

2) Another posthumous release, albeit one that would have been harder to foresee, Cocoon is one of eight newly discovered tracks recorded by much-loved bass/sax/drums trio Morphine in 1999, shortly before singer Mark Sandman's fatal heart attack. Received wisdom was that 2009's At Your Service double CD of unreleased tracks completely cleared the vaults of Morphine recordings for ever after. Not so.

The familiarity of Mark's bass rumble and Dana Colley's tenor sax mark this out as unmistakably Morphine within seconds, and there's a comfort as well as a sadness in that.

3) Straight In At... returns this week, with a play of four of the new entries from the official UK top 100 singles chart on today's date 22 years ago. By 2004 we were still in the peak period of chart entry volatility, and the (count them) 29 tracks I had to choose from this time were far from a record high total.

I could have gone for some better known tracks by Groove Armada (I See You Baby, no less), Ian Brown or Muse, or the week's highest entry from one of Donny Osmond's occasional commercial rehabilitations. My four choices are my clear favourites of the lot, however, Brian Wilson and Devendra Banhart's having even both been bought on the week of release.

The offering by Zen is a representative example - and an excellent, addictive example - of a track from one of the dozens of house, hard house or drum 'n' bass double A-side 12 inches that were peppering the lower reaches of the top 100 by the mid-2000s; some with tracks by the same artist, others split between two.

Conundrum sounds for all the world like something I could have added to the Dance Hall at Peel Acres feature by now, and John Peel did indeed play plenty of Zen St George's bountiful output, but not this example if the Peel Wiki is (as it usually is) taken to be true. The great man would pass away just four weeks later.

(NB I've just realised how much mention of death there is this week - I do apologise to you if this has proven in any way triggering).

4) More Italo disco, this time from 1983 and featuring a performance in the video in front of what resembles the then set of popular teenagers' quiz show Blockbusters (also launched in 1983; a coincidence, surely...).

Happy Children was a curious beast, not from a musical perspective - the stabby keys and long intro were copybook Italo disco - but in being a lyrical call to 1980s Italian children to transcend their hard lives, as delivered by a posh kid whose life probably won't be nearly so hard either way.

Pietro Paolo Pelandi, the man who is P. Lion, is the son of the count of the Alzano Lombardo province in northern Italy, y'see. Doubtless he meant well, but less charitable observers may liken it to a minor British royal writing an anti-poverty track and dedicating it to the hundreds of thousands of kids on their uppers in such as England's historic Red Wall political constituencies. The reception may not be the most sympathetic.

5) Mid-1980s David Bowie as seldom heard before, given a minimal, almost whispered German language reinterpretation. It's a source of personal irritation to me how little of cerebral San Franciscan synth-prodders Helen Lundy Trio's output is available anywhere online, and adding some tracks from their eponymous debut album onto YouTube remains a rainy day to-do job. For now at least there's this, as taken from early c21st Bowie tribute album After Low.

6) A reminder of the briefish but lovely existence of Finnmark!, as the name implies an unashamedly Scandiphile indiepop act based around the talents of former Just Handshakes (We're British) bassist Edward Forth.

Owner of, by Pete Green's reckoning, the most lugubrious voice they'd ever heard in indiepop (a compliment, for the avoidance of doubt), Edward's tasteful choice of covers (Guided by Voices) and knowing references (Considering a Move to Sweden likely requires no further explanation) always made for an enjoyable set on the occasions our paths crossed; and Brännö, a paean to the Southern Göteborg island of the same name, endures as probably the act's most popular track on account of its appearance on the 2013 Indietracks companion compilation.

I wonder whether Edward remembers the aftermath of a Just Handshakes... gig at the Red House in Sheffield in autumn 2011, wherein he explained in compelling, convincing detail to several of us present how the business model of Sheffield staple Hendersons Relish is a thing of wonder. If only I'd known him twenty years earlier, I could have reproduced that in my Economics A-Level exam and maybe not failed it with a single digit percentage score...

J xx

(A Sheffield person's worst nightmare. Good job it comes out of the taps, too. Picture is author's own)

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 25/09/2026).
Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

MELANIE A. DAVIS & THE MADNESS - Party of the Millennial (2026)

JANE & BARTON - I Want to Be with You (1983)

MORPHINE - Cocoon (1999/2026)

DAG FÖR DAG – Silence as the Verb (2010)

EUROTASTIC
P LION - Happy Children (1983)

STRAIGHT IN AT… September 26th, 2004
BRIAN WILSON - Wonderful (29)
THE CONCRETES - Seems Fine (52)

PLANETTE AUTOMATIC - Dance Around (2026)

HER SPACE HOLIDAY - Silent Films (1999)

ALE HOP & TITI BAKORTA - Bonne année (2024)

THE PINEY GIR COUNTRY ROADSHOW - Great Divide (2006)

THE FAMOUS BOYFRIEND - At Least We’re Trying (1998)

IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
FINNMARK! - Brännö (2013)

NO LANGUAGE IN OUR LUNGS
THE DIVINE COMEDY - Europe by Train (1993)

DENZEL CURRY & KENNETH BLUME ft Yebba - Difference (2026)

THE JASMINE MINKS - Cut Me Deep (1987)

INNER MAGIC featuring RUTH RADELET - Underground (2026)

CORNERSHOP - Something Makes You Feel Like (2012)

DOCH DER COUNTDOWN LÄUFT
HELEN LUNDY TRIO - Tanz mit (2002)

STRAIGHT IN AT… September 26th, 2004
ZEN - Conundrum (97)
DEVENDRA BANHART - Little Yellow Spider (79)

SALT WATER CRIMINALS - Supermodel (2026)

THE PRESETS - Talk Like That (2008)

AD NAUSEAM - Little Life Little Wonder (1989-1991)

BILL JONES - Hey Away (2003)

IN LOVING MEMORY: Linda Bean-Pardee
THE CHELSEA CURVE - Ride (2026)

THE LONG GOODBYE
SPACEMEN 3 - Big City (Everybody I Know Can Be Found Here) (1991)

Saturday, 19 September 2026

LIST 272 – 19/09/2026

(Coup Dur - Mary Street Live, Sheffield 11/09/2026. Pictures are author's own)

Hello again,

This week's List was always going to have a Francophone start to it, just not the one I was anticipating, following news of the sad passing of Catherine Ringer a few days back. Reports generally indicate that she was taken quickly by an aggressive cancer at 68, which is no age.

Tributes have been generous and in no short supply, not least from Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks, periodic collaborators with either Catherine solo (as recently as 2022) or with her and the late Fred Chichin's pioneering pop duo Les Rita Mitsouko. "Artiste incomparable, amie incomparable. Catherine, tu nous manqueras. Bisous de tes amis Russell et Ron", they write. Nous aussi.

In including Marcia Baïla in List #257 (q.v.), I wrote, "Because sometimes it's possible to have a monster hit at home with a five and a half-minute long amalgam of squelchy electro-pop, chanson and bossa nova. As announcements of statements of intent go, this debut single from 1984 took some licking".

Amid all of the musical inventiveness, that force of nature voice was always front and centre. Powerful, characterful, emotive. Again, as I mused earlier in the year, perhaps the duo's first producer Conny Plank saw something of the Dietrich about Catherine, harking back to his own formative years as the diva's soundman.

Needless to say, a tribute to Catherine will appear on these pages at some point in the coming weeks.

And what of the French (and Belgians) I was expecting to write about first this week? Those of us who say yeah to a bit of yé-yé duly filled our boots in Sheffield last Friday, enjoying what was just the second ever British gig for Coup Dur.

Theirs is very much not a mere pastiche of that sixties sound, however. Smart, confident, melodic, witty, and inflected with more contemporary indiepop touches on occasion. It's additionally to the late 1970s they turned for cover versions rather than earlier, giving buoyant renditions of both Devo's Uncontrollable Urge (another originally Conny Plank-produced track mentioned this week, coincidence fans) and Part Time Punks by Television Personalities.

Coup Dur's debut 10" released in May was cheekily entitled The English Want... Coup Dur, and tonight they very definitely did.

Big thanks as always to Elodie, Chris and Madeline for putting on such splendid entertainment, and to Nick Godfrey of Precious Recordings for putting out the headliners' stuff and encouraging them over here in the first place. Given Nick's and my shared background of sometimes working for the Racing Post, I did wonder whether he might have fancied paring a trip up to see Coup Dur with one to the St Leger at Doncaster the day after. He'd have seen history being made, too. Either way, I still owe you a pint from Indietracks 2019, kind sir.

***

(Precious Metals - Mary Street Live, Sheffield 11/09/2026. Pictures are author's own)

Coup Dur's support act belatedly brings us on to the selections for this week's List. The festive costumes from the last time I'd seen Precious Metals five days before Xmas were inevitably missing, but all of the wide-eyed vim of their repertoire was still present and correct - and indeed landed with me even better this time, thanks in part to Mary Street Live's clearer PA system and acoustics.

This was a great run through tracks old and new, from those whose jangles and dual female harmonies brought to mind Talulah Gosh to the more crunching tones and riffs of recent track Pigeon, included this week.

It was also grand to witness the deployment of an Omnichord on stage, almost certainly the first I've seen since Cris Romero of The Royal Landscaping Society accompanied himself entirely on one for an Indietracks tent session back in 2015. More Omnichords in pop, please. They're quirky and fun.

(Cris Romero of The Royal Landscaping Society at the Omnichord - Indietracks festival, 25/07/2015. Pictures is author's own)

In addition to helping putting on the bands, Madeline went the extra yard and supplied a tremendous (mostly) Francophone pop playlist on Spotify by way of further recommended listening. I'm certainly gorging myself on it at the moment.

One of just two tracks on there that I'd had earmarked to appear in the Fabriqué en France feature on That Music List before long anyway, Main dans la main is top-notch electropop fun from Elli et Jacno, mainstays of seminal French punk band The Stinky Toys previously.

Jacno, or Denis Quilliard to his mum, also released a smattering of tremendous instrumental albums, some not entirely dissimilar to this single but rawer in execution and on occasion veering into similar territory to earlyish Durutti Column. They're well worth your time also.

Fun fact #1. A dedicated smoker, Denis's stagename of Jacno was taken from the graphic artist who drew the Gallic helmet logo of Gauloises cigarettes.

***

Of all of the new or recent tracks included this week, I don't think any are newer or more recent than The Rabbit, the a-side of a single released last Friday which signifies the return of Nat Johnson & The Figureheads.

There's not been much recorded output from Nat since her relocation to the north east a while back, and the logistics of members spread far and wide are, by her own admission, likely to put paid to any hopes of full band gigs in support of these new tracks.

Even so, it's a joy to have Nat back, that clear voice and impeccable songcraft all as present and correct as before; and I'll never not be kindly disposed towards Nat's work following her temporarily reassembled Monkey Swallows The Universe's delivering of one of the single most poignant sets I ever saw.

(Nat Johnson pictured during the last ever Monkey Swallows the Universe performance - Indietracks festival, 30/07/2017. Picture is author's own)

Indietracks, 2017. Already known in advance to be the final final MSTU gig - no further reunions thereafter. Emotional enough already, but their playing a cover of a song by Slow Down Tallahassee, in memory of that band's late and much missed Claire Turley, had the Sheffield indiepop contingent in the crowd in tears. Claire's widower Ian was present among them. Heart-rending scenes and a generous tribute from and to equally generous performers.

Fun fact #2. One thing connecting the Figureheads and the subsequent choice on the List from early-1980s post-punks I'm So Hollow is that they each feature a former Sheffield University Library colleague of mine, Chris Loftus and Jane Antcliff respectively. There are more besides them still working here whilst also recording and playing. It's going to get to the stage that I'm going to need to embark on a however short lived music career before I retire, just so as not to let the side down. I play a mean comb and paper.